


lover is a day

by sirachamuchacha



Category: The Walking Dead
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 22:13:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16819495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirachamuchacha/pseuds/sirachamuchacha
Summary: Rick and Negan are soulmates before they even get the chance to be lovers.





	lover is a day

**Author's Note:**

> title creds to lover is a day by cuco

Negan says it as if he hasn’t known:

“...So, you’re my soulmate?” 

Rick looks around the barren diner, and the pink walls and the dirty yellow lights that make everything look like the perfect transition between summer and autumn.

He squishes the fat french fry between his fingers like it's one of Negan’s soggy cigarettes.

“Can you try not to sound so… so-” Rick tries to bite his tongue.

“So what?” But Negan eggs him on.

“So fucked!”

Negan smirks, and Rick feels his own tongue pulse in his mouth, already knowing what Negan is to try and say next. Whether that’s normal intuition or soulmates intuition, Rick doesn’t want to know.

“Don’t say some stupid shit about sex, I swear to-”

“Hey! Watch your mouth, Ricky,” Negan says, “This fine ol diner is supposed to be a family place!”

Rick rolls his eyes.

There’s not another soul in the diner save for an out of brains waiter: a newly dropped out college student everyone knows for being addicted to the weirdest drugs, like laughing gas and all that shit. 

The only prospect of family to Rick in this diner is Glenn behind the grill, but he’s nowhere to be seen for now. Thank God.

Rick grits his teeth, frustration bubbling within him though he has no energy for sadness. He could reach out and brush Negan’s knuckles and maybe then the contact would give his partial soul enough will to lash out. But Rick is sure the rejection would frankly kill him on the spot, so instead he is just dampened with sadness. 

Things go still between him and Negan- but dishes clink in the hands of the drug addicted bus boy, and jukebox music slimes on in the background, playing some Sam Cooke song. 

“What are we going to do?” Rick asks then, quietly.

There’s a thick pause, where Negan meets Rick’s overglazed blue eyes and stares as though he’s searching for clues.

In the background, a loud spurt of sizzling erupts and Glenn yells.

_ Siddiq, man, what are you doin!? It's a malt not a melt! _

“I’m doing everything I fucking can,” Negan says.

Rick bites down on his lip. 

“To break the bond?” 

“Could you really even call this a bond, Ricky?”

Rick rolls his eyes. He hates when Negan tries to get all philosophical.

“Look at me, look at how fucking  _ sick _ I look! Yes, it’s a bond, so help me God.”

Negan eyes him with surprise.

Rick can’t stand to meet his gaze, so he looks away.

“I don’t know if you noticed this, but I don’t like being told what to do,” Negan says, “Not by whoever or whatever the fuck put this shit on us, not by some bond _,_ and most fucking definitely not by you.”

Rick feels his airways tighten, like his chest is shrinking.

“I’d rather die, Rick,” Negan says, and it's no exaggeration, he knows that, and because of that Rick frowns.

“That’s the thing, Negan,” Rick says, “ _ You  _ got the tattoo first. You get a choice. But I’m gonna die. I  _ am _ dying. Because you’re the fucking idiot who was born first, and doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself.”

“You know I’m with Lucille.” He’s not. Not really. 

“I don’t give a fuck about Lucille!” Rick yells, hands clutching the booth table with his knuckles paler than pale. His chest feels like it’s thundering, and his side aches like he’s been impaled. “Fuck..” he mutters, muted by pain, and his voice is breaking .

“Rick-”

The concern in his voice is mocking, and it burns deep in Rick’s throat.

“Shut up. Please shut up,” he manages.

When the pain lessens to a dull pulse, he slides out of his seat, leaving Negan to cover the bill even though Glenn usually feeds them on the house.

He hopes for today Glenn won’t be so generous, just so Negan will have to pay for once in any way shape or form.

-

Rick recites these words a lot to the wall when his roommate is out at ballet practice: 

“We’ve known each other since we were twelve, but I just realized I liked you in the summer when you started parting your hair a different way and slicking it back with coconut oil. You always smelled like coconuts. Not like fake ones, but like the inside of an Almond joy which I guess could be considered fake, but that’s my favorite scent in the world so I don’t care. It was so embarrassing, finding out. As soon as I knew, you knew, because of the fucking bond, and it’s so unfair. Nothings been the same since then, and I’m so sorry... but how long did you know? How long did you know I was your soulmate? And would you ever have told me if I hadn’t found out myself? And when did you decide to ignore the bond? Was it way before I caught feelings or after? When did you decide you could leave me to die if it meant you could be free? Because even if I only liked you as a friend and not a soulmate that’s still pretty fucked up. Did you start dating Lucille before or after you knew? Why’d you have to bring her into this mess? She’s such a nice girl.”

Usually by the time he gets to the topic of Lucille he’ll run out of things to say, and his rehearsal will come to a stop. 

He’s been trying for months to work up the courage to just talk to Negan about this, even way before the sharp pains in his side and tightening of his throat started attacking him. But ever since the summer Negan’s main goal has been avoiding him, denying him, forgetting him. 

And that’s so fucking uncool.

Now though, now that blood is staining the sink in his shared bathroom and has been for weeks, now that he no longer has the will or the strength to clean it, he stops reciting. He stops practicing.

Instead, he lays on his single bed, feet hanging off the edge, and he grabs a pen and writes on his arms,  _ I hate you I hate you I hate you,  _ because he knows the skin he has is not his own and those words will not just be printed on his arms, but Negan’s, too.

And Negan, sitting in the middle of his Government lecture, will feel the thick sensation of a pen dragging harshly into his skin, too much pressure for normal writing. He’ll see the words and he’ll feel bad, but not as bad as Rick’s physical state actually is. He’ll never feel so bad that he dies over it. 

_ stop _

It appears on his palm, and he watches the ink appear with every new letter, feels the gentle tickle.

That’s all it is. A word.

So Rick starts again.

_ Coward coward coward coward coward _

Until there’s no space left on his arm, and the words look raw and puffy like a freshly done tattoo.

It's only when he sees Negan later- walking down the hall, absently rubbing at his arm to soothe the raw skin as he heads towards his dorm, absolutely unaware of Rick- that Rick feels even worse.

His side doesn’t ache and his breathing isn’t raggedy. It's nothing to do with the rejection, nothing to do with the breaking bond.

He dotes on his arm that night in the shower, softly rubbing the raw skin free of ink, knowing as soon as he’s clean, Negan is, too. 

-

Negan’s soulmate tattoo is falling off. 

Everyday it's just been itching and itching and Negan would mindlessly scratch it, thinking it must be a bug bite or dry winter skin or something. Until one day he looked down at his wrist and saw the familiar half of an upside down heart just scabbing away, being rejected by his skin like an acid frozen wart. 

He thinks it’s a good sign, despite the heaviness of the dull ache in his chest. It means the bond will be gone soon, maybe. But, despite the deteriorating skin, he can still feel everything Rick feels. Still feels the flames of boiling anger that randomly appear any time of day or night. Still feels panic when Rick is inflicted with a spontaneous round of soulmate pains. Still feels the disparity of Rick’s loneliness, sometimes so strongly that’s he’s torn from his sleep by the strong urge to race down the hall and hold the boy in his arms until he goes to sleep. He still feels all of Rick’s emotions so strongly and so immediately, a sign of only the deepest of soul bonds, that he’s left puzzled.

Negan knows this is only one sided, though. If Rick knew of Negan’s emotions, surely he’d tell him, if not for Negan’s knowledge then as leverage to get Negan to accept their connection. 

But Negan has had feelings for Rick for a long time, platonically and not platonically, as much as Negan tries to deny it. Rick has only had feelings for six months, and all six of those months Negan has been avoiding Rick, so his bond has not strengthened, only dwindled. So much so that now Rick himself is dwindling, and that’s another reason why Negan can’t be around him. Because he can’t stand to watch that, even though it has to happen. Negan won’t just deny the soul bond outright;  _ that _ would kill Rick. He just has to stay far away for long enough, and maybe something will happen then. It has to. Maybe Rick just has to get worse before he can get better.

-

Negan was just a day over eighteen. He hadn’t expected it to happen so soon after he had just gotten his tattoo, but it had.

And the thing is, Negan has always liked Rick a little more than a regular friend should. He’s always been jealous of all of Rick’s self professed crushes, all of his other platonic soul bonds, like the one with Glenn and the one with Lori and Michonne. Negan was even a bit jealous of the bond beginning to build with Siddiq when the two met in the beginning of the semester. He hadn’t even known it was possible to deliberately create a bond, but he supposes if you have the option to destroy, it’s only fair that you have the option to create as well.

Negan was always scared, selfishly so, that one of Rick’s platonic soul bonds would end up being anything but. He was also scared that he himself would end up Rick’s soulmate, because how could he not fuck that up?

And that was just so ironic… and confusing. 

“ _ NeganNeganNegan! Look! _ ” Rick ran into Negan’s room unannounced with his wrist bared, eyes wide with elation. 

Just a few hours ago (Rick barged in at eight in the morning), Negan was sleeping; dreaming a dream about Rick, vivid and opaque. A dream he could remember word for word, and Negan never remembers his dreams, ever. Before he can recognize the sign, however, Rick presents him with another one.

“This just showed up today! I woke up with my wrist itching so bad it like freaking burned!”

Negan looks blearily at Rick’s wrist and sees the faint marking of a tattoo matching his own, the skin scratched red and dry by the blunt tips of his fingernails. 

It’s then that Negan becomes aware of his shirtlessness, of his naked wrist baring his all too telling tattoo. 

Quickly, he gets up from his bed to find a shirt, particularly a long sleeve.

“That’s real fuckin’ cool, Rick,” Negan says, “Thanks for showing me your eczema again. At eight in the fucking morning. Proud of you.”

Rick watches him dress, and it’s intimate, but not uncomfortable. It’s familiar. 

His eyes follow the way Negan tugs his sleeve down lower on his wrist and curls his own fingers around it like he’s holding his own hand.

_ If I got my tattoo early, that means my soulmate turned eighteen yesterday. _

_ Hey didn’t you turn eighteen yesterday? _

_ Why haven’t you shown me your tattoo yet?  _

_ Did you not get one? _

_ Of course you got one, let me see it!  _

Rick skips all of that, all of the putting two and two together and all of that useless and probably terse conversation, and cuts to the chase. 

“Show me your tattoo,” he says, “I wanna see it.”

His face is still and Negan tries his best to evade even a single glance.

“Why do you wanna see my tattoo?” Negan asks instead, going to sit on his bed, where Rick still lingers at the foot of it.

“I just wanna know what you got.”

“You think I’m your soulmate? Is that why?”

“What? No…I,” Rick looks down at his wiggling fingers, swallows, and shakes his head, “No.”

“Well then? Why do you want to see it?”

Negan’s tone is harsh and Rick doesn’t like it.

“God, I just wanted to know! I figured this is something we’d tell each other since we’re, you know, friends?”

“Well you don’t always have to fucking know everything about me, you know? Jesus fucking Christ, can you crawl out of my fucking ass for once in my life?”

“As if you’re not stuck all the way up mine!” Rick counters, “You’re always asking me about my bonds with Glenn and Michonne and Lori! I’m sorry I thought the favor went both ways, find it in your heart to fucking forgive me.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, man!”

“Don’t tell me to shut up!”

Negan groans deep from his gut.

“It’s Lucille, alright! I got her fuckin’ tattoo, you happy?”

Rick quiets.

“Oh?” He says, crickets chirping in his eyes, “Really?”

“Who else did you think it would be?”

Rick doesn’t answer that.

“Have you told her?” He asks instead, “Have you showed her your tattoo?”

“She probably already knows,” Negan lies, “You know how this shit works.”

For a second, Rick is just staring down at Negan’s comforter, and the silence is full of the image of all the gears turning in Rick’s brain, of all the hopes being so strongly crushed and the naïveté being harshly scolded. But then he looks up and smiles, so soft it’s nearly fragile. 

“This is good, Negan. I know you really like her, and you can tell she really likes you. Everyone can, really. I think everyone was expecting this.”

Negan blinks. How can Rick be so sweet? It’s almost sickening.

Then he remembers a small bit of his dream: Rick dressed in warm clean cotton and the ugly, fierce sun behind his head, blinding Negan until he could only squint and laugh and smile, and Rick was being outshined for once in his life. In magnitude but never in spirit.

“I should probably go now.”

_ I didn’t mean to come here so early, but I got excited and I know your Mom doesn’t lock the doors. If I had known you weren’t my soulmate I wouldn’t have come, but I was so sure; I still can’t shake the feeling. I had the weirdest dream, and… you know what? Nevermind.  _

Rick skips all that, too, and just leaves. 

-

Negan has more dreams again, and Rick does, too. 

Ten nights, back to back- Negan knows what’s supposed to happen and so does Rick. It's in all the books and all the stories and explained by all the doctors and experts in the world. Ten nights of the most vivid, feverish dreams you’ll ever have, all about your soulmate; a last ditch attempt to tie the two in mention together. 

Negan doesn’t think Rick will die. Part of him thinks, maybe hopes, that Rick can’t die, especially not of this stupid soulmate rejection. It really can’t be the end of the world, can it? Being one your entire life, instead of two? Negan wishes he could trade spots with Rick, just so it would be him suffering and not the younger.

Maybe it's a projection of the future, maybe it's just poor luck, but on the first night, Negan’s dream is of Rick dying. His face is gaunt and his body is skinny and his complexion is gray, coughing up blood and pieces of his own heart as he lay flat on his dorm bed. Negan could feel the blood spattering on his face, could smell that bitter metallic twist in the air. He could’ve sworn Rick was laying directly on top of him, and the sharp juts of his tailbone were digging into his hips as he twitched and convulsed with suffering- just irking him, mocking him. Rick was choking on his own blood, gurgling and groaning the worst sounds Negan has ever heard, right on top of him, yet Negan was paralyzed by even his minuscule weight.

After that night, Negan decides sleep isn't all that great, and neither is it all too necessary. In fact, he could use that time to study. His grades are looking kinda fugly lately, and finals are coming up soon. Anything sounded better than sleeping when his soul bond was haunting him like Freddie fucking Krueger. 

But nine days later, it’s Sunday and the library is closed early and Negan’s roommate is gone, probably off fucking someone somewhere, so he has no one to coerce into pulling an all-nighter with him. 

When he looks to the mirror in the disgusting community restrooms, his skin is a shallow gray that his stubble only works to accentuate, and his eyes are bloodshot, sunken into the impressive shadows of his dark circles. Looking at his reflection only makes him realize how tired he really feels. Suddenly his shoulders sag, and his eyes feel the urge to flutter. His head feels too heavy on his neck to keep upright, but he doesn’t want to go to sleep.

The bathroom is empty, as it usually is at two in the morning, and Negan figures now is the best time to finally take a shower. He has so much time to kill, it seems like a good idea. The cold air against his naked skin as he strips makes the nerves stand on edge, and the sound of water showering down against the tile stills his staticky mind. 

It's the water that gets him in the end, so warm and steamy, with its hypnotic sound. Negan’s never been one for cold showers, in any instance, and definitely not today. But the way the water unwinds the knots in his back and fills his airways with puffy vapor makes him dizzy with sleep. The second he catches himself nodding off for the third time, he moves the shower knob in the complete opposite direction, and lets the cold encompass him entirely until he’s shivering so hard he can barely see straight.

He’s walking back to his dorm when Rick spots him. He gets one look at Negan’s damp, sullen form and instantly he knows. Rick figured the dreams had been happening to Negan for a while, but the sight of his state only confirms that. 

“You’re having the dreams, too, aren’t you?” Rick says. He stops Negan then, taking the towel from his feeble grip and wrapping it around his dripping hair to rub it dry. “Jesus Christ, you’re freezing.”

“I’m not dreaming,” Negan answers, his head mindlessly leaning into the touch of Rick’s hands. 

“What do you mean you’re not?”

Negan responds with nothing but a hum, and Rick tilts his head back to get a look at his face, pushing away the black hair falling in front of his eyes. There, in his features, he finds his answer.

“Negan,” he sighs, and it has nothing to do with the relief his body feels by touching his soulmate, though it does feel good. It feels like he’s being sedated. “You know you can’t avoid them, right? The second you go to sleep they’ll be right there. Doesn’t matter if the ten days pass, you still get ten dreams.” 

Negan mumbles, “Shut up…” then his head falls forward onto Rick’s shoulder.

He knows his presence is making Negan’s drowsiness worse. He knows when Negan wakes up he’ll find this out and avoid Rick even more, if that was possible, but the solid weight of Negan’s skull on his shoulder, the soft brush of Negan’s hair against his skin is all it takes to make Rick not care. He feels the blood rush all over his body, and just like that he’s warm again. 

“C’mon,” he says, wrapping an arm around Negan’s shoulders and ushering him forwards, “Let’s go to my dorm.”

Negan manages a questioning noise, small and throaty.

“So you can sleep.”

Negan can’t argue. His tongue and his eyelids feel so heavy, and the muscles in his legs are lax and nearly unable. The second Rick drags him into his room, one concrete heavy foot over the threshold, it's as if he’s walked into a field of lavender. Rick’s warm scent washes over him, so warm and woody and boyish, and he barely makes it to the bed before his exhaustion leaves him on the brink of unconsciousness.

Rick barely manages to scoot Negan’s deadweight towards the side of the bed that’s pushed up to the wall before he’s chucking off his shoes and sliding behind Negan, tucking himself against his back and sliding a hand beneath his shirt like he used to all the time. Negan’s skin burns with warmth, searing Rick’s palm so good. He rubs all along the boy’s side, and Negan exhales like he’s deflating completely. Rick has never felt so warm, pressed against Negan, touching his skin and feeling his exhales spiral towards him in invisible curls and wisps. 

“Negan,” Rick says against his shoulder. It's not a call or a question, but a throw of the voice.

By now, Negan is gone far away in the land of thick sleep, dreaming pleasantly of walking through the aisles of an empty grocery store and finding Rick at each corner he turns, the boy handing him water, then wine, then bread. 

And again, until there are no more aisles to search: water, wine, bread. 

Rick ends up sleeping, too- but it’s a quick dreamless sleep, like the span of a blink. 

When he wakes again, Negan is slipping out of his arms, trying hard to be discreet. The sun is vague but present, showing the early morning through linear flecks of light caused by closed blinds. 

With no inhibition, Rick winds his arms tighter around Negan, knotting their legs further. “Where’re you going?” 

Negan freezes, and his body is tense.

He can’t say no to Rick, not even if the soul bond were gone, and especially not when he sounds so lovelorn and so sleepy and comfortable. 

“Back to my dorm,” he answers, “I have class,” he lies.

“No you don’t. Not in the morning.”

“Well, I have shit to do. Gotta study for finals.”

He says all this, but he doesn’t move.

Rick turns him over in his arms, makes the boy lay flat and face him. He’s grateful to see his features less corpse like and more refreshed, even if by a fraction. His lips are pinker and his skin is peachier, the whites of his eyes less red. That’s good enough for Rick.

“We need to talk, Negan.”

“What is there to talk about?” Negan’s denial is soft and tired, and he lays his forehead on Rick’s shoulder, absorbing the warmth of his energy.

Rick let’s his hands meet the hair at the back of Negan’s head.

“You almost passing out from exhaustion the second you see me, after not sleeping almost ten days. Me feeling like shit for weeks, coughing up blood, but the second you touch me it all eases away. Maybe we should talk about that.”

The word blood gives Negan chills, and Rick can tell he’s uneasy.

“You know that shit isn’t real right? All your pains and shit, it's all in your head.”

Rick’s fingers still.

“We’re fed all this soulmate shit the second we’re born until the day we die, but it's fucking bull. Don’t-” Negan sighs, “I… you can’t fall for it, Rick. Please.”

“It’s not bullshit.”

“Yes it is.”

Rick shakes his head. 

“Then look at this,” Negan says, lifting his wrist and pulling back the sleeve, “If it's not fucking bull, then what is this?”

Rick looks down at the giant scab on Negan’s wrist, where the faint markings of half an upside down heart lay in ugliness. Rick wants to peel the skin off and then super glue it back down right where it came from, because that’s exactly the other half of the heart on his wrist. Yes, he’s always had a feeling, especially with his soulmate sickness, and taking Negan’s word, but nothing feels better than actually knowing. Than actually seeing for yourself.

“You’re my soulmate,” Rick says.

Negan sighs as Rick places his opposite wrist next to Negan's, as those pieces join up as whole.

“No shit, Rick. We’ve been through this before.”

Negan moves his arm away, and Rick looks up at him hopelessly.

“You can’t let it fade away, Negan. You can’t just let it fall off like that. What about me? What about  _ my _ life? My parents, my friends…” Rick chokes up, “All of my fucking friends… and you! What about you? Don’t you love me? Even as a friend, even enough to not let me fucking die?”

“You’re not gonna die, Rick. Get that through your thick ass head,” Negan says, “And I do love you. I do, but.. but soulmates? How can- how do I get used to that? We’ve only ever been friends all our lives, and now we have to be soulmates just because we turned eighteen and got our tattoos? Now if I don’t touch you, you die. Now if I don’t see you, you get sick. If I don’t kiss you, don’t fuck you, you lose energy. Do you understand how fucking crazy that is? How dependent we’d both be? And- and I didn’t even get the chance to fall in love with you first. It didn’t even get to happen organically, I just… it was just left to us like some huge fucking debt, and love shouldn’t be like that, Rick. I don’t want that for you. Or me, for fucks sake.”

Rick looks down at Negan’s wrist again, and his frustration leaves him anxious. He gently grazes a thumb over the flaky skin, eyeing it with confusion.

“But you feel it, right? The soul bond? You know what I’m thinking, can guess what I’m gonna say? You feel the warmth right? And the energy?”

Negan cracks a small, soft smile, so faint it's mostly shown in his eyes.

“That’s just us, Rick,” he says, “That’s just time.”

“It’s not the soulbond?”

Negan shakes his head. “Most of it, no. I could tell what you were thinking before the bond even formed.”

Rick sighs, and lays his forehead against Negan’s, closing his eyes.

“I don’t know what to do.”  _ If you don’t want it then I don’t either. _

He doesn’t know how to say I wish we could stay in this moment forever, so I would never die, so things wouldn’t get complicated, so you wouldn’t be forced into doing anything more than be near me, without sounding desperate or whiny. 

“Me either,” Negan says.

He leaves whenever the voices in the hallway become plenty, whenever the sound of cars outside Rick’s window is too much to sleep through. They don’t have much to say, so they don’t say anything as Rick sees Negan out, but there is no finality to the air that surrounds them and there is no sense of panic.

It’s see ya, see ya- and they both mean it. 

Maybe there’s another way to figure out this whole soulmate thing.

-

_ Wanna meet for lunch? _

Rick writes it just beneath his tattoo, slow and deliberate so that Negan won’t miss it. Then he waits, at first a handful of minutes respectively, because he knows Negan is still in class. But then it’s more than fifteen minutes past when Negan should’ve been out, and he looks down at his skin just a little more gingerly before he adds another question mark. Maybe Negan just forgot. Finals are just around the corner, and everyone is always so preoccupied this time of year. Rick gives Negan three more minutes before he decides to feel frustrated, and really, Rick should’ve only given him two. Maybe even just one, because Negan owes it to him- if not out of obligatoriness then at least out of politeness. A simple fucking no or some fake excuse would have sufficed as well, something typical of Negan, but this, this silence is just unfair.

But still, whether it be desperacy or just a simple act of pettiness, Rick can’t let it go. He grabs his phone off his bed and sends Negan a text, just the same as the penned message on his skin:  _ Wanna meet for lunch? _

Before Rick can even lock his phone and sigh, he gets a response. 

_ Glenn’s? _

And it puzzles him. What kind of game is this? What new level of asshole has Negan reached all this time they’ve been apart from each other? He grabs his pen again and quickly draws a swift line across his forehead. 

_ Yeah glenns _

_ Send me a pic of ur face _

Negan blanches at his screen. 

_ wtf.. Why?? _

Rick rolls his eyes like Negan is ridiculous, when he’s the one with pen on his face. 

_ U kno why asshole _

Negan raises his brows. 

_ I kinda dont but ok _

So Negan takes a picture, tries not to look so tired in it but that’s besides the point, and sends it to Rick, and Rick is more than surprised to see the inkless face that furrows at him.

Immediately he looks at his wrist again. The writing is still there, so is the tattoo; nothing out of the norm. 

He’s not sure what it is that tells him to do it, but just to to be sure, he looks at his other wrist, and sure enough there it is: Negan’s matching tattoo. A crisp, clean, already healed line drawing of half an upside down heart. He presses both of his wrists together and sees the heart become whole.

Sometime later, his phone buzzes with a text from Negan.

_ Im already here ass where tf r u  _

_ god if u stand me up… _

Rick, still trying to piece together this entire situation in his mind, responds with a simple  _ omw  _ before he makes his way towards the diner just off campus. Through the glass windows he sees Glenn and Negan sitting together in the usual booth just beside the kitchen, talking back and forth. He can see Negan has already ordered for him, and his recovering appetite is killed once more. 

The two look up at Rick when they hear the door chime, their conversational trance suddenly spent. 

“Fucking told you!” Negan shouts at Glenn. He turns to Rick, “I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Ricky.” He has a smirk on his face, but something about it is a little off. 

Glenn sighs out all of his breath and slides out of the booth.

“You should’ve let him down, Rick,” he says as he smooths out his apron, leaving Rick with a pat on the back as he heads into the kitchen, “Guess it's on the house… again.”

When he’s out of sight, and it’s just Rick and Negan, it all feels so silent and thin. Even if the diner is in the middle of its rush hour.

Rick clears his throat, and Negan looks down at his food.

“I need to talk to you,” Rick says as he slides into the booth.    
“Figured. I need to talk to you, too.”

“About?”

“What do you think?”

There is no malice in Negan’s tone. There may even be a smidge of humor. 

Rick understands why. The soulmate thing is all they talk about now. The soulmate thing is the only thing that tore them apart and is now bringing them back together again. 

“My, um, my scab fell off,” Negan begins.

“Ew.”   
“But my tattoo is still fucking there, like underneath it. It even looks newer and darker. And not just that but like, I guess I fucking grew another tattoo on my other wrist and it’s your tattoo. I have the pair now.”   
Rick’s eyes widen, and he wonders if he’s heard the wrong thing.

“Wait, what?”

Negan pulls back his sleeves. “Look,” he says, and Rick sees for himself the exact same set of tattoos he has on his own wrists. He can’t find any words to say, can’t find the lax in his muscles that’ll make his jaw drop because he feels like that's what it should be doing. Instead he reaches out a hand and carefully traces a finger along the new ink. He doesn’t know why, but for some reason he thinks the second he touches the tattoos Negan will jump back from some sort of soulmateish electrical shock, that his touch will burn, or that Negan will fall and turn into a pile of ashes- something dramatic like that. But everything remains the same, nothing happens, and the people around them still talk, and the waiter is still on drugs, and Glenn still banters with Siddiq so loudly you can hear it through the walls, and all Rick feels beneath his finger is warm soft skin. 

Rick has never been so happy to not feel anything. Negan on the other hand still has his qualms, and seeing the trouble written on his face reminds Rick of something. 

“I have both of them, too,” he says, hurrying to bare his wrists from beneath his favorite flannel shirt. The look of complete disbelief on Negan’s face may be Rick’s new favorite memory. He looks so innocent and awake despite the haggard dark circles beneath his eyes that say otherwise. 

He looks up at Rick with that look in his eyes, and Rick can’t help but smile although he doesn’t know why. Maybe these new tattoos of theirs aren’t even a good thing, but Rick’s gut is telling him it is, so he’ll settle with that. 

“What does- how do we- is the soulbond still there? How do we know if it’s fucking there or not?”

“I don’t know,” Rick says, “I don't know but, I was writing on myself and I don’t think it transferred to you. That’s why I asked you to send me a picture.”

Negan stifles a laugh.

“Is that why you have pen on your face?”

Rick curses, rubbing a sweaty palm across his forehead in vain. 

“But that’s just one thing, right? How do you feel? Do you still feel like shit?”

Rick tunes into himself for a second. He hadn’t really thought about that. Hadn’t really noticed the absence of the crippling pain in his side, or the way his nightly ritual of coughing up blood has slowly receded since the night Negan slept over in his room a few weeks ago. His sex drive is actually returning; he had a boner yesterday for the first time in months, which is a good sign even if it was during a very important oral presentation. Slowly but surely, all of these nuisances had faded from Rick’s life, and now he feels okay. A little tired, but tired like a college student, not tired like his soulmate who’s avoiding him is his only source of energy. 

“I’m okay. I feel okay,” he says, astounded, and then, “Oh my god, Negan, what did we do?”

“Like I fucking know,” Negan says, “But can I just say that I fucking told you so?”   
“Shut up- really, what the hell did we do?” Rick sits back in the booth, taking a deep sip of his half melted strawberry malt as if it were brain fuel. He crosses his arms in thought, “Are soul bonds even real, then? Of course they are, you can’t deny the tattoos… so does that mean we’re some sort of textbook case? You didn’t do some black magic or something, did you?”

“No, Rick, I didn’t do any fucking black magic. We both rejected the bond, now it's gone.”

“It can’t be that easy.”

“Well apparently it fucking is.”

Rick huffs. He looks at Negan who plays with the rings on his fingers. Despite the good news he still looks nervous, and much like Rick he hasn’t touched his food. 

“Did we reject the soulbonds, though?”

“Something we both said must’ve done it,” Negan shrugs, “Did you wanna be soulmates?”   
Rick shrugs.

“I was okay with it. It was a little weird, but I figured I could make it work if you wanted to. But I mean, I almost died so it's kind of obvious you didn’t.”

Negan goes quiet for a few seconds too long. But he recovers quickly.

“It’s not that I didn’t want you, Rick, because I do, I do want you and I’ve wanted you since like fucking middle school. Not in a sex way but in a boyfriend  _ and  _ sex way. But, I don’t want to possess you. Like, what the fuck? I don’t want to own you, and I sure as hell don’t want you to own me. But you already knew that.”

“Yeah, didn’t know that first part,” Rick laughs out his giddiness, “would’ve been nice if I had, because it’s uh… mutual.”   
Negan smirks. This is how he’s always wanted it to happen.

“Consider this our first date then, Ricky.”

Rick feels his cheeks get hot.

“Endorsed by Glenn?” He jokes, and Negan laughs.

“Endorsed by Glenn.”

Then the door beside them opens, and the man himself emerges from the kitchen, wearing splotches of grease and a kitchen towel slung over his shoulders. 

“Someone say my name?” He questions, just before he takes in the rosy content look on both Rick and Negan’s faces. Ah, the air of flirtation. He smirks, “Looks like some people finally learned how to delay the soul bond.”

Rick’s eyes widen immeasurably. Negan crooks his brows and look to the corner in confusion. 

“What?” Rick says, and it's everything Negan was thinking. 

“Delay the soul bond,” Glenn repeats, “Achievement unlocked. It’s like storage; put it away somewhere safe and then pick it up again when the time is right. Me and Maggie had to learn how to do it when she went to study abroad her junior year of college. It's all about communication, boys.”   
“And you didn’t fucking tell us this, why?” Negan says. 

Glenn shrugs, “Number one rule of delaying the soul bond? Don’t talk about delaying the soul bond.”

-

So they’re still soulmates, as it turns out. The bond is delayed but it’ll come back when they want it to. If they ever want it to. They’re both unsure of whether or not they’d like that. 

Another two weeks has passed since their first date and everything is still good. Rick isn’t dying anymore. Negan isn’t avoiding him. It’s almost as if everything between them has reverted back to how it was in the summer, only better, because now they’re boyfriends and there’s nothing hidden between them.

“I was doing some research,” Rick says to Negan one night. It's Christmas Eve and they’re upstairs in Rick’s room binging Studio Ghibli movies, “and apparently delaying soul bonds was a technique originally developed to help someone cope if they had their soulmate die a sudden death. Like, if they died in a bus crash when they were thirty or something, the other soulmate could pursuit counseling to delay the bond so they could keep on living their own life and not have to follow suit. But it’s rare that a widowed soulmate actually does choose the delaying option.”

“That’s so fucking scary,” Negan says from under Rick’s arm, “being so attached to and dependent on your soulmate that you don’t want to continue living all the life you have ahead of you.”

“Yeah,” Rick agrees, “I get it now. Why you were trying to do what you were doing. It’s better this way, so much better. We’ve got all the connection and none of the dependence, and we can delay the soul bond for as long as we want.”

Negan cranes his neck to press a kiss to Rick’s mouth. Whenever he does this, or things like this, he can always feel that feeling, like a string is being pulled from deep within his core, trying it’s best to come up his throat.

“Do you feel it, too?” Negan asks, “That weird feeling? Like sometimes it wants to come back up? Like the bond is coming back again?”

“Yeah,” Rick says it quietly, like he doesn’t want to admit it. 

“But we’ll be fine,” he adds, “We control this thing, remember? It doesn’t control us.”

“...says the one who almost let it kill him,” Negan quips, immediately preparing for retaliation.

“Oh fuck you!” Rick says, shoving a giggling Negan off of him, though he laughs himself, “Hurry up and go put on Ponyo before I kick your ass.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank yall for reading !! <3


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